Slashdot Mirror
Online Courses and the $100 Graduate Degree
First time accepted submitter GCA10 writes "Forbes reports on the latest project of Google Fellow Sebastian Thrun (the proponent of self-driving cars.) He's moved on to education now, believing that conventional university teaching is way too costly, inefficient and ineffective to survive for long. So he started Udacity, which aims to deliver an online version of a master's degree for $100 per student. From the article: 'Udacity’s earliest course offerings have been free, and although Thrun eventually plans to charge something, he wants his tuition schedule to be shockingly low. Getting a master’s degree might cost just $100. After teaching his own artificial intelligence class at Stanford last year—and attracting 160,000 online signups—Thrun believes online formats can be far more effective than traditional classroom lectures. “So many people can be helped right now,” Thrun declares. “I see this as a mission.”'"
I thought his whimsical attitude and passion for teaching were amazing and I learned a lot for zero dollars. I'd easily pay 100 bucks to have him teach me more stuff.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
I want to see free education thru the PhD level as some countries offer. There is no reason it should cost a fortune to become educated. It's a legal racket, much like for-profit healthcare and pharmaceuticals.
What stops me from going back to college now in my mid-forties is ROI. I cannot afford to be in massive debt what with a wife and kid. My wife has massive school debt from her degree and it would be grossly unfair to add to that already burdensome bill.
Great idea... praying it succeeds.
You get what you pay for
And yet some of the best things in life are free. It would be nice to add a world class education to that list.
Everybody knows you can't get a quality education for cheap! This is the land of the Private University that offers freedom by enslaving you in debt.
Thrun's name and reputation ought to change that soon enough.
"The idea of a degree is that you spend a fixed time right after high school to educate yourself"
Some stuff seems to be padded out to fit a 2 or 4 year plan when offering it NON degree / as badges system is better.
http://chronicle.com/article/Badges-Earned-Online-Pose/130241/
We need more Tech schools / apprenticeships as yes you do need some training but CS is not IT and 2-4 years is a long time to sit in class room with at times learning very few skills needed to do the job.
That said, there are many important things that simply can't be taught via computer. I am an evolutionary biologist (specifically human evolution), so that is what I know: you can't learn anatomy at the graduate level without cadavers, period. You can't learn biological variation without dissecting and studying many cadavers. You can't learn comparative anatomy without dissecting animals. You can't learn the fossil record without handling the fossils (or high quality casts). You can't learn population genetics without spending time in a sequencing lab. You can't learn field biology without going to the field. You can't learn paleontology without going to the field. There are many things that I learned in my graduate training that simply can't be taught on a computer.
Personal tutelage by a master is similarly an irreplaceable experience. I've learned an enormous amount of information from watching online lectures and taking online courses in subjects outside of my specialties - but I would absolutely not consider myself on par with people who have traditional graduate training in these fields. I loved the AI class - but Professor Thrun never discussed my ideas with me, criticized my writings on the topic, and certainly never helped me design a project and then execute it. I can't call, Skype, or email authorities in AI to chat about the newest papers in the field - because I simply never met them through the online course.
As enthusiastic as I am about the exciting possibilities of newfangled gadgetry, computers and the internet are still tools with limitations. Powerful tools, but not totipotent tools. Sometimes newer isn't better. Sometimes newer is worse.
Right now we have testing centers for vendor-specific certifications.
Run the classes on-line for whatever price.
Those who just want to learn can stop there.
Those who want a degree can pay to take the tests at the testing centers.
For more complex tests either offer them in central locations or have traveling test sites. These would be more expensive than the other tests, but probably a LOT cheaper than the current model.
there are people going to college who are not cut out off it and there are lot's of classes that should be in college any ways.
Of course it is possible to get a world class education for $100 or less, but education isn't why people go to college. The real reasons to get a college degree go beyond simple knowledge:
A) Get a worthless piece of paper to distinguish yourself. Sure, it isn't good, it isn't a positive trend, but in many fields unless you have a bachelor's or master's degree your application won't even be looked at.
B) Provides opportunities for networking with like minded students and employers. In high school most people couldn't meet with very many like minded students, especially if they were into computer science. There is a reason many start-ups happen in college, you can get all the "right" type of people, you get the people with vision, you get the code monkeys skilled with every programming language under the sun, you get the hardware people and you have thousands of potential customers right at your university.
C) It provides a chance to go out and see the world. Being a student you usually don't have much of anything tying you down to a single country. I mean, sure, you've got family, but spending a year in France, six months in Singapore, a few weeks in Andorra isn't anything major.
D) It provides a lot of "hobby time" to work on pet projects and research, especially at graduate level. When you are employed for a company, everything needs to be justified in terms of profit. In college you can just do things for the heck of it.
Every "book knowledge" thing you can learn in college can be learned for free online. In the rare case it can't be found online, it can be found in the textbook which you can buy without registering for the class. Yes, you do have a handful of really good professors, but the best thing they provide isn't book knowledge, it is guidance.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
... I'm not sure. Insightful? Funny? Guess it depends on how you view it...
Three Squirrels
and why should I have to pay $$$ for humanities classes for a IT or engineering job?? at least some of that stuff can be offered at a much lower cost.
It's all the filler (that are some schools you don't have that much choice over) at some schools a over load of GEN edu classes (does a IT / desktop job really need tig and other higher Math classes?) some required classes are just there to fill up classes and to make people pay more (some schools still have the swim test)
Why do have pay fees at the college price level to take a swim test??
when higher edu wants Physical Education as a required class it shows that it is a cash grab and some ways a rip off.
well rounded person is part but CS is not IT. Now communication or writing skills with a shaky knowledge of culture and history managing can be done at a community college and have the jobs skills be in there own schools.
CS is more a high level thing
Do you want a some with a Engineering BA working on your car or some who learned on there own / apprenticeships / tech school?
Other trades have apprenticeships and you learn REAL skills doing them. But It's been said that people with CS do not have needed skills (tech skills) to do the job.
I did not particularly like his teaching style (in the AI class), however that comment applies to any class, free or not. I do 100% like the idea of offering education for a reasonable price.
Look at it this way; in the future an employer needs to select a new hire. 2 people apply, both with master's degress. One paid $40,000 a year for it, one paid $100 a year. Which is the smarter one?
Indeed, you get what you paid for, not.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
should we move most gen edu to community colleges? With that ending up being a new base level Degree. And from there on the idea of Degrees is rework to them being more about what you are learning and are filled to the skills and not the fixed time tables of the old degree system.
Then after that you can stay at the community college and take vol classes, go to a tech school, take a apprenticeship, go on to a pre med school (reworked with any need higher level gen edu)
No serorities, frat parties, or jocks. Just a guy sitting in front of his computer in his underwear filling out quizzes. The plot will center around the reliability of his Internet connection and the pesky neighbours who keep knocking at his door.
I got paid $25,000 to get a masters degree - tuition waiver and stipend for two years. who's the smartest in the room?
Look at it this way; in the future an employer needs to select a new hire. 2 people apply, both with master's degress. One paid $40,000 a year for it, one paid $100 a year. Which is the smarter one?
So one went to Harvard and the other watched some Youtube videos and maybe emailed in a couple of tests and a thesis of some sort to an advisor of such demand that they charged nothing for their services.
In the grand scheme of things, yeah, the second one might be "smarter", but as a real employer I will have to go with the first person.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Back in 1999 I read a paper on "Using the WWW for education" at IVETA http://www.iveta.org/members/index.php/IVETA-Basics/What-is-IVETA.html
In the conclusion I wrote:
"What Will Really Happen?
What paradigm will come to dominate education?
There will ultimately be only two or three certifying organizations for each vocation. These organizations will produce marque qualifications of trusted standard, like Coca-Cola or Pepsi for soft drinks; McDonald's for Burgers.
The race has started. Microsoft and Novell have become the certifying organizations for certificates in computing. They have achieved this by publishing a syllabus and franchising a worldwide testing network. City & Guilds are paralleling that evolution. They seek trainers, and already offer franchised testing all over the world. The University of Minnesota has recently taken the first step toward becoming a worldwide agricultural university.
There is room at the top of each vocation for two or three testing authorities. Whoever captures recognition as the quality examiner will come to be the possessor of a marque that is comparable in value to the Netscape or Amazon or even Microsoft domain marques."
I feel somewhat vindicated by this article. I did not anticipate the dotcom bust or expect Netscape to fall under the monopoly onslaught of Microsoft's IE. And the MCSE appears to be of limited value, mainly used for the maintenance of Microsoft products.
Tertiary educators were too greedy to move to the online model as quickly as they could have. Those that further delay will risk sinking into relative obscurity and existing in the future as highly paid trainers for the marque institutions' qualifications.
LAN party.
New Economic Perspectives
As part of that $40k you're also getting contacts and connections. You think Prof. Thrun is going to recommend you to a colleague who might be hiring, or provide a reference for you? Because I know my master's advisor certainly will.
You mean the zero effort and no preparation? It was total embarrassment.
Hope he'll put more effort into his new venture.
There is no reason labs have to be done in university settings.
You could have totally independent, for profit companies running labs for every kind of science that people could take part in. I can also see universities opening up labs only to outside students for a reasonable fee.
As you say, so much learning can be done online... in the end all that will be left for universities is truly the world of higher education, not of freshman level stuff.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Which one is going to stick to the job because he sold his first born child to cover the debts?
You're nothing; like me.
You can't give someone a master's degree unless you can evaluate that they know their stuff, or else the degree becomes worthless.
Between grade inflation and cheating it seems like that is awfully close to true for the vast majority of degrees today.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
His Robot Car class was much better, although still not quite up to the standard where I would pay for it. Now the MITx Circuits class..... THAT is freakin awesome and very professionally done. I can't wait for the next set of course offerings from MIT and Harvard over that system.
and if we don't change the system master / MBA will take over Bachelor's. So then you will have people loaded with loans. Be in school for 6+ years post HS with few real job skills to show for it.
An awful lot of Americans are paying a lot and getting very little out of college right now... especially at for-profit universities. Every taxpayer has an interest in this subject because of federal student loans.
Major reform is going to be necessary because the college debt bubble is going to pop sooner rather than later. I applaud this man's effort to bring some fiscal sanity to the world of higher education.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
for $40,000 I bet HE would.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
One paid $40,000 a year for it, one paid $100 a year. Which is the smarter one?
That's a good question.
One hundred dollars buys two or three hours of time from a professional tutor or teaching assistant.
Assuming no laboratory or administrative costs, how valuable is an education that you got for the cost of two or three hours of one-on-one attention (including teaching and evaulation) per year?
~Idarubicin
Those general education classes may have had more to do with having an educated populace with a breadth of knowledge than simply making sure you know how to turn your crank.
That whole general diffusion of knowledge thing George Washington spoke of.
“Promote then as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”
I know, a crazy old fashion idea. May as well accept the low information voter and the inevitably apocalypse they come with.
I took his lessons, and read a bunch of other resources like a mother fucker to get a good grade and I learned a lot. That was the point and I think for a self motivated learner who is willing to search out sources it was a good class.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
I suppose that's true, until people who have completed the less expensive one prove more capable and useful, in significant numbers, over time.
Then you take the better one. Who actually cares what you paid for your degree? The point of having one (nowadays) is to determine how useful you'll be before you have a real work history.
text books. Html 5 interactive text books. Start with K-5, then move on up.
Please.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's not about the cost, nor even about the content - it's about the acceptance of the received qualification. This pathway will have little value until prospective employers recognise its value as being equivalent to bricks-and-mortar qualifications.
As part of that $40k you're also getting contacts and connections.
You hit upon the true value of college, the social network. College offers everyone an opportunity to leave their socioeconomic environment behind and move into a new and, hopefully, better one. That is one reason fraternities and sororities continue to thrive as they process these people into their alumni systems. The college social system is far from perfect, but it is probably more efficient than its education system. Ask Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, or Mark Zuckerberg, three famous dropouts.
The humanities, social sciences, and pure math/science are there to produce 'educated people' not those who can fill a specific job. Admittedly, some GenEd classes are there as filler, but the fundamental goal behind them is to ensure that anyone given a degree does not embarrass their university. Admittedly, if you get your Greek philosophers mixed up it isn't a big deal, but you should have some appreciation of the role the ancients played in developing western culture. One area for GenEd that is often overlooked is a statistics course at the level needed to understand what is and is not a valid conclusion from data.
I have just finished a couple of online classes with udacity, Applied Cryptography CS387 and Design of Computer Programs CS212. The latter class was fine although they totally messed up the final. Each problem required corrections and/or clarifications. CS387 was a joked taught by a novice. Things like using padding that you can’t reverse, or sending encrypted messages that only a person who intercepts multiple of them can decrypt (the intended recipients were unable to decrypt the message they received). Or how do you like to have a “professor” who after several attempts over several days can’t correctly phrase a question on the final. Happily we now have a video giving the “correct answer” to a nonsense question. Final stupidity, he subtracted 8 from 64 and got 58. Incompetent in my opinion.
That is what you have to put up with right now. There is a long way for this to be of serious value.
As a scientific programmer, I find it amazing that any significant portion of people in serious IT place no value on math higher than and including trigonometry. Is this actually the case?
And as a citizen in a democracy, I find it amazing and frightening that a significant portion of people who actually vote see no value in general education courses. When I was a kid in the 90's, we used to call someone a "tool" as an insult.
But you are missing the other part of that equation which is all the insider bullshit and the prestige the name dropping can bring you. I've known guys that have landed 6 figure salary jobs straight out of college with frankly mediocre grades, how? because the one in charge of hires was a guy that went to the same frat. My oldest is doing pre-med at the local college and just because he's done charity work with one of the local churches where the pastor is a big alumni he is gonna go through pre-med with practically no debt at all and has even got a local doctor sponsoring him for all of his text books and a $2500 a quarter stipend.
A LOT of what you get out of these colleges is about networking and name dropping more than it is simply the education itself. Go to an Ivy League college and join one of the frats and it'll be damned hard for you to fail anyway but up, all because of the connections you end up with. While i don't personally think that is worth the frankly insane prices that higher ed is charging it certainly isn't worthless either.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Would be nice but the people who make the tests, grade work, produce classes, etc all expect to be paid. At the college level those people have decades of training and don't come cheap.
The real problem is the cost of evaluating what students know.
That's what internships are for.
That may be the future: DIY college education plus unpaid competitive internships.
Here's the deal.. I agree with the concept, principle, and methodology here. Overall I think it is a great idea. Problem is that the govt is hand over fist into the higher education market. Student loans which are conveniently not unloadable by bankruptcy have reached almost a trillion dollars of unforgiveable, never ending debt, and just a year or so ago the entire financing program was completely taken over by the govt. This kind of money does not simply walk out of Mordor.
what was the catch? My best friend's mom just finished her Doctorate, and paid for it with loans because nobody would just give her money for it. What'd you have to agree to to get the stipend? I'm in America though, I understand the rest of the developed world is a bit better off.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
it works for Indians because their gov't is subsidizing them coming to America (and sometimes our gov't too :(... ) and because they're so desperate they'll work 70 hours a week for 2/3rds the pay of an American (effective cost about 1/5 that of an American).
:(.
If you're a native in your country and not being hired with the understanding that you're going to be abused, a $100 Master's degree is literally worse than worthless. The folks with dime store diploma's that applied at my old place were specifically weeded out because the assumption was if you're dumb enough to pay for one of those you're not worth hiring.
For the record, those mills serve one other purpose (besides taking advantage of the desperate). If you're already employed and your position suddenly requires a degree for no good reason you use them to keep your job. Oh well, that's what happens when you mix dog-eat-dog capitalism with altruistic education
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You get what you pay for
Time is money.
The time you put into your studies is also a payment. Its merely a payment that does not go into the school's bank account.
Some rare individuals are perfectly capable of a university level education through their own independent studies. That said, most people who believe they are capable of doing so are incorrect. One of many reasons is that they will cherry pick topics to study and pass on some topic that they have no interest in, this is often a mistake. Most people need the structure of a formal degree program, or something comparable, to get the broader understanding that they actually should have.
If that was true then immigrants will never find work, since they leave their fraternal network behind. I am now working in my third country.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This is fantastic I participated in the AI Class and I learnt so much. The class was so engaging, and it had me finely combing the textbook. I still remember the topics we went over, up until the point where I realised my math skills were insufficient and I would have to study 8-10 hour days to complete the rest of the course. But the experience was great! Now I know what actuators mean, the travelling salesman problem is and so on. Thrun, this work could really change the world, what a good set of news to wake up to.
I'm an Egineer and did Calculus, Complex Math, Applied Math, Statistics etc. In practice I do Reading and Riting and almost zero Rithmetic.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
So, you say, it's a meritocracy where ass licking skills are what matters instead of academics. Yeah, I've been to a U.S. school too, and while the quality of education was way better than what I had in Europe, the social side of it was a disaster. I tried to stay on campus only for the classes and library time.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
It's very sad that those connections matter. School should be about what you know and what you can do, not about your ass licking skills :(
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
You're right! And with an initial signup of 160,000 students (I'm certain that number will increase as popularity increases) at $100 a student, I think there may be a fair bit of money exchanging hands.
It seems that the only value of general education courses is in making you fit in with other people who think the same. I'm yet to find anything to show otherwise. I'm serious. I'm not saying that nothing else but science should be of any interest. Quite to the contrary, I find it pleasurable to explore areas of theatre and literature that interest me. I'm not going to pretend it's of any use other than giving me the pleasure of learning it. It may perhaps improve my writing a bit, but that's not very important.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
He alluded to this being their business model, actually, in an interview a while ago. Prospective employers would definitely not mind paying for detailed score statistics and access to the top few hundred students in the class.
Robotic Car and AI Class tests are NOT multiple choice. You actually write code, or compute answers by hand. And that code gets evaluated by how far it diverges from the ideal.
It will be interesting to see who self starters w/ their $100 degrees are likely to hire when they start becoming successful. Would they hire the folks with the same $100 degree or the folks who are part of the much more expensive "insider" system?
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. -- Willam Blake
What puzzles me is that these online courses don't exploit two main features: they're all digital and there's very little interaction with the teaching stuff that's necessary. Why do they need to be repeated? Why can't I just sign up and do entire courses at my own pace? At least don't restrict the start period.
F.e. coursera had an interesting course about probabilistic graph models, but I didn't notice it until it ended, so I couldn't enroll to do it entirely, and could only watch the videos, without being able to work on any exams.
Recently I enrolled into Thrun's 2nd Robotic Car course, but I had to postpone it until I was done with my masters. The first few lessons I did ahead of schedule and to me it didn't seem there was any work done to modify the original course - I recall repeatedly checking the "Office week" videos to see if any of our new questions were answered, without any changes.
So please, don't re-run courses. If you really do have something to add, just modify a couple of videos/problems and notify students that you're doing a "second release", rather than a new semester - that old teaching model doesn't need to be applied here.
Welcome to Feudalism 2.0, Millenium Edition.
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
Why pay?
Thunderwood is FREE: http://thunderwoodcollege.com/
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
$40,000 per year? WTF college is that?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
And as a citizen in a democracy, I find it amazing and frightening that a significant portion of people who actually vote see no value in general education courses.
Have you been following the news lately?
It seems that a significant portion of people who actually vote see no value in any education...
People take 13 years of general ed classes before they ever get to college. If they haven't gotten a decent general education by that time, they are not going to get it with a few more years.
I paid a total of 10000$ to get a BSc, an MSc and a PhD in Computer Science in Italy. I now work happily as a researcher in the Netherlands.
Higher education should not be treated as an enterprise. Higher knowledge is a very scarce commodity (an online recording system/whatever is not the same thing, otherwise the easily available books would be more than sufficient to get any degree); this means that schools are effectively a monopoly without much competition.
Who can solve this? The state. Look all over Europe for the simple solution: higher education benefits everyone and is paid (because paid it must be) by the state mostly and the end user a little bit. The little bit in some cases is increased if the student is not passing enough exams. There are also *lots* of scholarships that both look at ability and low income, and these often end up supporting poorer students who do not necessarily have excellent results but just ok results.
Why does the state need to step in? Because Communism is great and Mother Russia is close-by? No: the state needs to step in because the gain with more educated citizens is of the collective, not just the subject of the education.
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
Yes, but are you sure that the things you do are not subconsciously influenced by the knowledge you have from all the math you learned?
I don't know what decade they started, but by the 90s, it was normal for a community college to have some sections of lecture-based classes replaced with whatever commercially-created educational video series the local PBS affiliate was airing that semester. I recall seeing the idea applauded as the wave of the future whenever it was brought up in the media, basically for the same reasons that this project is.
(Note: I'm focusing on the quality of in-person vs. video classes on the same topic, but skipping the equally important issue of whether a university degree program at any level should mirror a vocational certificate.)
So, I took one class that way to fulfill a requirement for transferring into a UC school; to be honest, it would've been acceptable for facts I could've read about on my own, but it wasn't remotely as enlightening or helpful as attending classes in the same department. The main flaw was that the lack of interaction between the teacher & students or student-to-student -- laughing, exchanging comments, adjusting lecture/perspective on the fly based on feedback, etc. -- made the video equivalent to a "bad" instructor of the sort that spends the minimum amount of time/energy required to squeak by and whose students mirror them in learning.
My thought is essentially thus: if all you want is to learn the mechanics of something you're already interested in, video classes can be useful in the same way reading an instruction manual is. Otherwise: bad teachers exist in our schools, but the solution isn't to emulate them instead of replacing them with good or excellent ones...
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
"As a university instructor I recognize that the writing's on the wall - online courses will inevitably replace many aspects of higher education. Much of what I teach is already freely available on the internet. There are already many online lectures from which I crib material for my own lectures.
1. What if other online connections provided the question and answer feedback? YAAEBUI (You Are An Evolutionary Biology University Instructor). (Had to try the acronym!) What if we readers of various forums made networks of who is qualified in what area and asked our best questions to *someone other than the professor*? As an Evolutionary Biology University Instructor I presume you have at least heard of, if not read, Stephen Jay Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. (That book just randomly ended up in my personal library simply because it looked neat, but I haven't read it yet. It's large!) So what if I saved my two best questions and asked you? (I know, at some point the quantities become out of control but just sayin' what if online students got additional advice on social media forums separate from the original instructor?)
2. Will the prices of grad programs go up if the lower level courses aren't subsidizing them?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You assume a difference in quality.
More money != better quality.
I'm not intimately familiar with the US education system, but would I be wrong in thinking that degrees must meet certain nationally defined standards in order to qualify as a masters degree?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The business case here is that it is expensive (time-wise) to develop content for 100 students, but becomes much cheaper to do so for 200,000. There is a whole industry built on updating learning material every year. Sure, we learn more about how to effectively teach all the time, but neither our knowledge of the universe (at least the sub-set of that knowledge that we need to teach the average student) nor our knowledge of how to teach better grows so fast as to require a complete re-write of the curriculum each year. There is a lot of fat in the system that can be done away with. This is an attempt to do just that. Maybe we can't effectively teach without face-to-face contact. Maybe we can use that face-to-face contact better. The lines and limits are worth exploring, especially since the cost of keeping the status quo in place is to place effective education out of the reach of most of the worlds population.
And yet some of the best things in life are free.
Not quite.
At the risk of sounding incredibly troll-ish, the best things in life are illegal.
But many other costs of education, grading, feedback, etc., are proportional to the number of students. The amount of personal time you get from instructors for $100 is at most a few hours. For some students, that's enough. For most, it isn't.
The opposite of "a social network makes finding a job easier" is not "no social network makes finding a job impossible".
Besides, immigrants tend to have very good social networks, composed of other immigrants from the same country of origin.
Actually, his business model includes "placement fees" to industry. He would identify students with high scores and/or creative solutions, and offer to introduce his top students to industry for the standard placement fee a personnel would normally charge. In my mind, that is at least as good, if not better, than what your prof will do. This model is a bit better than the off chance your prof may know someone somewhere that may be hiring 1 student, possibly.
US schools place a lot of emphasis on social interaction, networking and extracurricular activities. Did you join a sports or drama club? Did you participate in a public service society? Did you join a social club?
The reason Americans get less out of university and get into greater debt isn't a problem with universities. Americans complete university at twice the rate (30%) of Germany or France (15%). You can't expect 30% of your population to go to college and do as well as when only the top 15% of your students go to college. The high demand for college education has caused prices to skyrocket, fueled by the fact that due to cheap student loans, students can actually pay. And a huge number of those degrees are in fields that are basically useless from the point of view of getting a job, including visual arts, psychology, and journalism.
Yes, major reform is needed, and it's fairly simple: get rid of student loans for anything other than STEM fields. As a tax payer, I see no reason why I should subsidize people getting a college degree that amounts to little more than a personal hobby.
In a roundabout way, online classes do fix this problem, because while the class may only cost $100, you still need to live. And online universities aren't going to waste a lot of money on football fields and other facilities that universities needs to get their non-academically inclined students to part with more money.
But many other costs of education, grading, feedback, etc., are proportional to the number of students. The amount of personal time you get from instructors for $100 is at most a few hours. For some students, that's enough. For most, it isn't.
With checks and balances, marking the lower level students could be an assignment for the higher grade ones. Some exercises can be computer marked. Of course there are still going to have to be some professional markers, and providing exam conditions isn't free (for most certification exams its about £50 or $75 to the centre).
This might more or less work for degrees where you only need a computer to do practical work. But what if you want to get a degree in -let's say- RF design? Sure you can do some simulations on your home computer, but how about building the stuff, measuring it with a high quality measurement equipment? A lot of degrees require a well equiped lab if you want to get any experience in the hands-on aspects of your field or just to get better understanding of what you learned in your textbook/online training,.... I think online courses are great to get a better knowledge on a particular topic, but to replace a complete education program by it???
Speak with experience here.
I do employ people, and I've been doing so for the past 2 decades.
I find that the quality of newer crops of university graduates are much lower than their counterparts that I had hired 10 or 20 years ago.
With the panflation syndrome ( http://www.economist.com/node/21552214 ) already permeated many of the traditional brick and mortar universities, it wouldn't do me too much harm for me to try hiring some who graduated from the $100-per-degree online universities
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
One paid $40,000 a year for it, one paid $100 a year. Which is the smarter one?
That's a good question.
One hundred dollars buys two or three hours of time from a professional tutor or teaching assistant.
Assuming no laboratory or administrative costs, how valuable is an education that you got for the cost of two or three hours of one-on-one attention (including teaching and evaulation) per year?
Which is the better candidate- the one who learned the material from the lectures and course work, or the one who had to go out and spend 20 to 40 hours a week in study groups and face-to-face tutoring sessions? Hint- it's not the kid who needs his hand held through every lesson and exercise.
An online course doesn't have to mean it's lousy education, and that you'd have to pay through the nose for it from an expensive university. Excellent quality learning can be found online or in video courses for nominal fees compared to the incredibly overpriced (for what you get) university offerings. Clearly these also don't have to replace those institutions (and in a lot of cases, simply cannot), but rather, I hope they spur traditional "higher learning" to increase quality and lower prices to *reasonable levels*. I've found absolutely fantastic training in a 7 DVD set that $40K/year at a top state school couldn't touch. You can't begin to tell me that the student loan debts many have are worth the degrees they got from those institutions. Obviously, certain fields and practical labs just have to be done on campus, but there's a timeliness to much of the online training which can't be beat; and good interactive training (although often a bitch to create) can truly enhance learning speeds. Besides, $100 is nothing. We're not talking about angry birds or buying shareware here, as long as the course pays for itself in income you will get as a result of it, then it's a great price whatever the investment. ~$200K for 4 years and not able to get a job in the market with not so practical skills doesn't sound so appealing after seeing what's out there online. Employers care about results and job experience. Other hires are from networking, and on today's socially connected web, that's not only at the frat house.
In France, for that price, you can get a degree from a proper university and actually physically attend the classes. The functioning costs are paid by the government through taxes.
However, as a result, almost everyone has a degree and therefore degrees have started to become meaningless.
Assuming no laboratory or administrative costs, how valuable is an education that you got for the cost of two or three hours of one-on-one attention (including teaching and evaulation) per year?
Wouldn't that primarily depend on how much time I spent and how much I learned? At least in an ideal world it should be utterly irrelevant if I did it all alone or had a personal teacher 8 hours a day. As for testing, yes if you need the degree then that costs. If you just want to get better at your job and earn raises/promotions that way, maybe you don't need it. Maybe you can do some variation of no cure - no pay and show people that you know your stuff. Or pay for a proper testing and certification. Alone this is just the video version of the book, but I've learned a lot from books so... what exactly is the problem here?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I went to a top tier research university. It was the worst "education" you can imagine. Indifferent Asperger cases (one of whom hit... HIT! some guy with his chalkboard pointer because he didn't like where he was sitting for a test ) .It was 100% "sage on the stage" crap where grading was done by TAs who decided whether they liked students or not before determining the curve by their own admission.
My friend was up for valedictorian so he lit the locker containing the class notes of his nearest competitor on fire. When I asked him why he did it. he said "he would have done it to me" , and he was right. It was THAT competitive. TAs were overburdened and HATED the proximal source of that burden, us, the undergrads and they let you know it at every turn. Death through gossip was staple fare. Administrative proceedings were initiated at the drop of a hat on someone-said-someone-said type "evidence". The bookstore was a goldmine (I knew the manager) I mean we're talking HUGE amounts of money and of course the books were trash some rep had bribed the professor into using , and of course we never used it even once in class.
The awesome sewer that university was, my utter inability to complain about the quality of the product I was sold or get my money back in any way shape form or size convinced me that while research and the publishing of peer reviewed papers is the basis of western civilization and the bedrock of The Good Life, at least this university and probably a lot of others like it were , aside from their scientific output, basically sewers that needed to be imploded.
They will fight this guy with everything they have. They will sue and assert patent rights They will seek through all means to discredit this guy, his graduates and his "institution" . I am telling you I tried to get online courses and lectures going in 1999 and they shunned me and shut me down. Inn their eyes, in the eyes of the admins and boards and the whole fraking network of big money donors and politicians and people they employ they are 100% necessary to education and will always exist just as they are now even if ti means bankrupting the nation one student buried under debt at a time.
Is this the start of the implosion of education? Could this be it? Please let it be so.
The amount of personal time you get from instructors for $100 is at most a few hours. For some students, that's enough. For most, it isn't.
I'd strongly disagree with "most". 200 students and one hour of office hours and the guy doesn't speak english anyway is not an unusual situation.
There is nothing wrong with people who have learning problems going to special schools that cost $50K/yr and everyone else goes to the $50/yr school.
The purpose of higher ed is not to hold your hand like a kindergartner anyway, its to teach you how to teach yourself. Look at the environment you'll be in when you graduate.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The issue isn't necessarily developing content. The issue is creating a degree out of it. Anyone can sit down and pound out some content.
How do you turn that into a degree? Well in order for it to be accredited I believe you'd have to create some standards. Tests, assessments, things like that.
Someone is going to have to manage those, mark them, etc.
No on is really going to respect a multiple choice masters degree, and no one is going to mark papers for a penny each. There are also issues in dealing with the practical side of some kind of learning. While literature can be discussed online as well as it could in a classroom, it might be harder to run an online chemistry course where students never do any actual chemistry.
The $100 one may be smarter, but the $40,000 one will still get hired, even if (maybe especially if) his degree is in a field of limited utility.
Only the clueless think that higher education is primarily about imparting knowledge and wisdom. It's primary purpose is to act as a filter to allow corporate culture to launder its classicsm.
The "higher education" status symbol has become heavily used as a filter because it's either illegal or unpopular to hire based on membership in other clubs like religion, race, ethnicity, or extended family. Higher education only serves its purpose as long as it's expensive in money and time. Requiring higher education is a seemingly blameless way to keep the riffraff out. A $100 degree does not serve that purpose.
An expensive education is a sociological analogue of the peafowl tail. It's an economic signal that you are the right kind of white/black/$aggrievedminority person that will fit the company's core value matrix. A $100 Master's degree subverts this utility--leave it to the Internet--which is why you can find so many confused and borderline desperate people trying to dismiss online education based on stupid arguments, as if traditional universities could possibly be worth the huge cost difference because you really learn so much more from bit of professor interaction (which, as someone who has a Masters degree, is a fiction anyway, because graduate professors in my experience do not have good student interaction).
Expensive education may go away, but it will pop up in a few decades in the form of something else. All you speculative fiction authors can get to work predicting what that will be. More likely, anyone will be able to become an expert on any subject for nearly free (we are practically there now), but companies will still hire people who wasted years of life and enough money to feed several immigrant families for a decade, because "higher education teaches you how to learn and broadens your perspectives".
And yet some of the best things in life are free. It would be nice to add a world class education to that list.
A world class education is already on that list, but proving you have a world class education isn't. The degree is for getting paid for your knowledge. Having a major university name on the degree bumps up your perceived worth, even though the knowledge could have been obtained much cheaper.
I am 100 percent for this. I already have two master's degrees from "esteemed" universities, but I'd gladly pick up several others through this method. For me, and for a lot of others like me, at one point I stopped caring about the actual degree itself but became infatuated with the idea of more learning. I love to learn new things, and when more and more legitimate ways of doing so arrive, like this, we're all the better for it.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
A common cultural background for all students (so they can live well together) should be one of the goals of the pre-university school system. If it doesn't it's a big failure. When you're 18 it's late.
$100 is probably not enough to pay the people who will mark the exams. Most universities allow external students: those who are not taught by the university but simply show up and take the exams, and you'd be hard pressed to find any that do so for $100. A masters course typically involves a dissertation that is at least 100 pages. Just reading it is going to take several hours. If you can do it in five hours (which is pretty good going for a thorough read of a masters dissertation) then you're talking $20/hour, and not leaving any more time for marking the other exams.
I would not trust a $100 masters degree (unless that's just $100 paid by the student, with the rest funded from elsewhere) for the simple reason that it is not feasible to do a proper assessment of the student for that little money. $1000 might be quite feasible though...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The purpose of higher ed is not to hold your hand like a kindergartner anyway, its to teach you how to teach yourself. Look at the environment you'll be in when you graduate.
And yet, in my brick and mortar school, when we encourage individual learning, peer mentoring and peer leadership, we are accused by students/parents of not doing our jobs. People want to be handheld today. They've been taught that someone will be there to help them, and they've been taught it for the last 50 years. Oh, and in today's society, when you don't get your way, do you know what the first course of action is? Threaten a lawsuit - granted, I only have my own experience and it is anecdotal evidence at best.
Sometimes I envy the guy that doesn't speak English. At least he can tune out the Bullshit.
It's a matter of economics - once the course is designed, written and recorded it doesn't scale up the same way - delivering it to 100,000 people isn't 100 times as costly as delivering it to 100 people. The lecturers and professors can make the same amount either way, with courses costing $100 or $100,000 respectively.
Agreed though, online courses do lack the face-to-face and practical elements in many ways, although alternatives can be found.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I agree with you whole-heartedly. While I was working on my thesis, I hated my PhD for making me his indentured servant. BUT, the lessons I learned under that man were invaluable. If you want to see what a Master's with no supervision looks like, you only have to look at the degree mills that already exist - in my area the big one is William Woods. If you want the degree, you can get it. Their selling point is that it takes 18 months; not rigor, not value, just that it takes 18 months.
While I would love to see an online option for advanced degrees, it is a very fine line to walk between $100 for a good degree, with valuable experience, and thanks for your $100, now put paper in your printer to receive diploma.
Many of these new innovations are important steps in developing better educational systems. Be careful not to overestimate the acceptance of these approaches - successful completion of one or more of courses of study may not mean much, at least in this early era.
Accreditation of big box university programs is a rigorous process. Even top-ten schools prepare for these reviews as their highest priority. Why? A degree from an accredited institution means successful completion of multiple courses of study that have all been examined by outside academic reviewers to their standards.
It is difficult to imagine that a $100 Masters degree course of study can be offered by an accredited institution. Employers and graduate school admissions verify the credentials of their applicants quite closely. A non-accredited degree says nothing positive about the qualifications of the holder.
Eventually satisfactory standards will exist, but for today, don't expect your straight-A internet grades to carry equal weight with accredited institutions that have evaluated you all the way from making the admissions cut to passing all requirements for a degree.
The future will be different, but if you need job or admissions credentials right now, be realistic about how interviewers will have little patience for trying to compare your performance in every online course with those known bricks and mortar grades.
How much do you charge for an hour's work? If you were doing a Master's degree, and were hoping for high quality feedback on the work you'd laboured over, and handed in, representing your highest quality academic achievements, what sort of feedback would you like?
Probably you'd like somebody with some knowledge of your field to spend 30 minutes looking over your major assignments and give you some personalised feedback (rather than "78%, v.good").
So how many major assignments should a real, high quality Master's degree include? Let's call it 6 in one year (=3 hours personalised marking) and an extended dissertation? How long should somebody spend reading your 10-20,000 words? a couple of hours at least I'd hope. Now we're up to up to 5 hours marking and feedback on your work.
How much are you going to pay them? 10 dollars / 7GBP an hour? or do you need more pay for a decent marker?
I reckon the maths only add up to automated marking, students, or MaccyD wages for the supervision of a 100 dollar Masters student.
I'd be cautious of hiring people who weren't adequately checked before starting their course and only had Maccy D mimimum wage quality supervision of their work, and automated pass/fail decisions based on this.
Is it possible to educate kids without immersing them in a university environment where they can find their peer group, and actually hang out with them?
I believe I have learned more than 90% of my engineering/computer knowledge on my own and from peers, even though I went to UC Berkeley for undergrad, and probably over 50% of my math/science. By the time I'd take an electronics or computer course, I'd already built most of the hardware and software taught in the course. That's because I had a great peer group who loved to build stuff, code hacks, and explore arcane mathematics. People like Geo Homsy, who's working on the Organograph, taught me far more than any teacher. He once, and not completely inaccurately, boasted, "I taught him everything he knows."
I feel that it's easier to learn science/math/engineering/compsci material through Google and Wikipedia than in class, but without that college campus experience, who would bother? I feel the major challenge for on-line education is connecting people. We already form on-line groups to debate virtually every interesting topic, but is bitching on a list like this any substitute for planning an audacious stunt over beer and pizza with some of your best friends? How important is learning group theory if you don't use any of it to solve every moving-piece puzzle you and your friends can get hold of? How important is writing that computing assignment to calculate x^n, where n is an integer, if you don't compete with your friends to come up with an optimal solution, thus discovering a fascinating and little known unsolved mathematics problem in comp sci? How is learning alpha-beta tree pruning going to feel in an online course (probably like a root canal), compared to competing with friends on Othello or Go algorithms, thus requiring everybody to grok it in their gut? How good would a geek like me be at Calculus if I didn't keep getting asked by hot chicks to help them with homework over at their place? How do you reproduce that on-line?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
But many other costs of education, grading, feedback, etc., are proportional to the number of students. The amount of personal time you get from instructors for $100 is at most a few hours. For some students, that's enough. For most, it isn't.
As budgetary squeezes affect the universities in Europe (where laws prevent the fee gouging that angry people on the internet tell me is killing the US), personal time is the first casualty. I took a career break last year to do a university language course, and my individual time was limited to the marking of two or three assignments for each module. There was some class groupwork, but nothing like what I consider equivalent to the tutorials I got in my first degree. As an outside course, I did an online module in anatomy and physiology. There were three formative assignments. The first was a short essay on the first two units of the course. My individual feedback was two sentences. The next two formative assessments were multiple choice quizzes, and the tutor just distributed an answer sheet for us to mark them ourselves. After that came the final assignment -- one single essay which determined the full mark for the module.
This module on its own (you take 8 modules per year at my uni) would have cost the standard fee of £161, and that is after the subsidy from the government. I have a strong suspicion that this module is a lot cheaper to run than their honours-level modules, and that the degree level courses are cross subsidised by first and second year modules.
I'm dubious about the full mass-market distance degree, but I don't see any reason why we can't automate first-year courses in this way. The purpose of first and second year in most disciplines is to teach the absolute fundaments of the field of study. In my first uni, everyone studying in the Faculty of Science and Engineering was squeezed into one of four or five maths courses(maths, maths for engineering, maths for computing, maths for physical sciences etc), and that was already many, many thousands of students being handled by 10 lectures and a bunch of postgraduates acting as paid tutors (not quite equivalent to US TAs). Find a suitable solution to deal with the problems of inputting mathematical notation on-screen and develop a robust algorithm to mark students' work including working (neither of these is a major issue now) and those 4 maths courses can be expanded from the thousands at that particular university to millions worldwide, at a tiny marginal cost.
Cheating may seem like a problem, but if the model goes the way I predict it, cheating will only mean that you get entry into the degree years, which you'll obviously fail, because you haven't learnt what you should have in the first place and you just aren't ready for degree-level study.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Not all IT fields have any real use for math. I am a Network Admin and I cant think of a time I have ever needed anything more than basic math skills.
Reading about this on Slashdot provides us with a clear source of inspiration in looking for ways to do this (marking) economically. Why not make marking of assignments, exams and papers a requirement for receiving your "degree"? The same could be done with tutoring, with senior students helping junior ones. This all scales very well, and reflects much of current practice at universities. The key difference is that the work is no longer paid, but goes towards earning your degree.
Meta-marking could also be built in to make the school mostly self-running (like Slashdot, or even better, Stackoverflow).
There are lab kits that student get for distance learning science courses, some of which are surprisingly sophisticated. There's no way they'd fit into a model where the whole program is $100, though.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I don't think that a common cultural background is needed to live well together. I find it way more interesting to live with people who share little cultural background. Perhaps it's just me.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The value of a degree to highly talented, highly motivated and also pretty damned lucky individuals is questionable, but if you average out the entire jobs market, the ordinarily talented, highly motivated and not especially lucky individual is better off with a degree than without.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Fuck NO. I had work, friends and family, that filled up my extracurriculars allright.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
You keep saying "ass licking" as though that's the only kind of social interation. That says more about you than it does about society.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
So, you say, it's a meritocracy where ass licking skills are what matters instead of academics.
What you call "ass licking skills" the rest of us call "social skills." No, we live in a society, where social interaction and relationships rule over numbers on a paper. I didn't kiss my advisor's ass, but I worked with him daily and he knows my abilities and the kind of work I can produce. Thus, if one of his many many colleagues from around the world says to him "Joe, I'm looking for a guy that can do X, know anyone?" he's going to drop my name. If someone asks Professor Thrun the same question, he's going to drop the name of one of his real students who he's had personal interactions with, not on of his Udacity students.
Now, why you seem to put no value on social skills, I don't know. Maybe you're just bad at them, since you tried to stay in the library for four years. But slashdot is pretty much the only place in the world where you'll be modded +5 insightful for having no EQ.
If you're a native in your country and not being hired with the understanding that you're going to be abused, a $100 Master's degree is literally worse than worthless. The folks with dime store diploma's that applied at my old place were specifically weeded out because the assumption was if you're dumb enough to pay for one of those you're not worth hiring.
If you're dumb enough to equate a qualification from people such as Thrun and Peter frigging Norvig with the degree mills, you're the one who's not worth hiring.
Although having said that, they seem to be having a hard time attracting any other real academics and instead fall back on a mix of .com types, and in the long term, reputation's going to be the make-or-break for Udacity....
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I had several tens of thousands dollars saved by the time I finished.
The issue here is the $100. Now he says a masters, does he mean from nothing to a masters? So is that 2 years or 6 years of schooling? Even at 2 years of schooling assuming he only had to provide website access and instructors to grade the material.
50/year
10 courses
$5/course
Let's say 30 students per course, $150/course/semester. Semester is 4 months, which means the instructor could get $37.50 per month per course they're running.
6 years of schooling?
divide that by 3. $12/month/course
they'd have to run 100 courses a month to live.
Unless we're outsourcing to some destitute country where we have apparently highly trained instructors who will work for just pennies a day.
What it really boils down to is that best case scenario a teacher could get at most $1.25/student/semester assuming the site took nothing.
They'd need thousands of students to make it worth their while.
He's setting it up for failure here, or at least not genuine degrees that another institute would accredit.
Pretty much sums up what the word used to mean- a learning community; you learn as much as from each other as from the professor. Online degrees, whether you pay fortune line at Phoenix or almost free at Udacity lack that special sauce of collegium.
That's why I said, "There's no way they'd fit into a model where the whole program is $100, though." Mainly I responding to your comment that in an online chemistry course, student's don't actually do any chemistry and pointing out that in the general case that doesn't have to be true.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I've taken quite a few of the Coursera offerings and while on the whole they are good, they are not a substitute for the in class experience. Will this hypothetical graduate degree be awarded based on the successful completion of a series of multiple choice tests? Robo graded programs or essays?
Where is the feed back from the instructor? Where is the feed back from other students? An online 'discussion' forum is a pitifully poor substitute for either especially when the class sizes are in the 10s of thousands.
I think an earlier poster in a somewhat rambling post did hit on one reason why people seem hell bent on moving this way - grade inflation and the general lowering of standards. I saw this over 10 years ago when getting a graduate degree in computational finance. I had a far better grasp of math nearly 15 years after my undergrad degree than those seniors who were taking some of the entry level grad courses. And I'll be the first to say that I was not even remotely a math genius and often struggled to get Bs and C's. But it was abundantly clear that I had actually learned something. So is the push for on-line courses in part driven by what seems to be increasingly weak offerings at the traditional programs? Could be. But I do not expect that to translate into people getting anything better, just cheaper.
What passes for social skills in the U.S. is often considered ass licking and being stupid in other parts of the world. What you refer to is normal, but that's not nearly what's going on at the campuses.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
It usually is, unfortunately -- in the U.S., that is. It's a big social club, like a mutual adoration society, closed to outsiders. That's not very healthy for the long term progress, you know.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I agree, people from other cultures are more interesting, but interacting with other cultures is no different than general studies classes -- you're learning in either case.
Free Martian Whores!
Click!
And for me, the penny finally drops. Because I was about to say "yeah, but that's a computer course." However, people keep arguing that computer programming is the "new Latin" -- the sine qua non of modern education, and I now see why they're correct. I've been following the Coursera Machine Learning course (to a point) and working through the book Natural Language Processing with Python, and I'm learning a lot about matrix manipulations and list manipulations... and this through Octave and Python respectively. (Well, relearning mostly, but Octave and Python are new to me.)
These languages transform mathematical calculations and manipulations of text into computer programs, and computer programs are fairly easy to assess automatically -- therefore the subject becomes more suitable for quick grading. But more than that, as I go, I'm building up my toolkit of technologies that I can apply to real-world problems in various spheres.
I've not been employed in any dev work in a long time, and in the roles I have, I often see opportunities for automation that my less-IT-literate colleagues miss.
So we need to turn every subject possible into a programming problem , and everyone's a winner.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
You're assuming that it will require a human to grade the exams. And extended coursework is becoming more come in lieu of a thesis. The time required for a human to teach a course isn't what it used to be. And why should it?
The bigger issue is the honor code. But Udacity just entered into an agreement with Pearson testing centers to allow students to test in a recognized environment.
I admit, I'm a bit biased after taking the Robotic Car class, but I think it's time for a change in our educational structure. Costs are increasing much faster than inflation, yet technology is clearly there to make it cheaper.
To say nothing of the equipment...IRMS, ICP-OES, SEM, TEM. You don't get access to those for $100.00.
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
It's really interesting to see this discussion on a site that often promotes the merits of free software.
I haven't taken any of Thrun's courses yet so I can't attest to the quality, or lack thereof. But in my line of work I sometimes have Higher Ed clients and all of them are scrambling to create online offerings. Online education is clearly the future. Yes, it's still evolving and needs improvement but I think it's a viable option for many people including working adults, late bloomers or people that simply just can't afford a standard classroom education. Much of the value of the onsite college experience is networking...I get that...but many people are asking themselves if it's really worth running up a six figure debt to get it. In some fields, yes it makes sense. Others not so much. I don't see online education so much replacing in class as much as I see it complimenting it. This idea that going to college is the only way to get a quality education is nonsense. Some of the brightest people I have worked with are completely self taught.
I can't agree. A well rounded education is valuable. I've been taking various classes off and on since I graduated, and intend to go back in a couple of years after I retire.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I actually LIKE learning.
Free Martian Whores!
Given your broad generalizations, you just come of like you have an axe to grind. Seriously, every campus in America is socially deficient compared to the rest of the world? And you've been to how many... you own? And they treated you bad so now you have a vendetta?
Look in the mirror. By your own admission, you didn't even try to socialize. You went from your residence to class to the library and back again. You didn't join any clubs, you didn't join any social organizations, you didn't volunteer... you just hung out with your friends. Seems like your own problem.
Not all students will do the final test.
The assumption here is that if 160000 students enroll and pay their fees, a (much?) smaller number of students actually follow through to the end.
Because the fees are so low, why not give it a try? I suspect the dropout rate is much higher with a low entry fee.
Load New Commander (Y/N)?
Even a taught masters traditionally requires a lot of research. In Scotland, a Masters-by-research is effectively a one-year mini-PhD of all research, but a taught masters still dedicates one third of its credit to the masters thesis/dissertation, which should be a new research project or publishable quality. Most of this is done over the summer after taking a full year of classes, which by themselves are equivalent to the workload of a honours degree year, but at a higher level of difficulty. I can't imagine a masters with no research component. Other than an MBA, and that's not a real masters.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
No, it isn't. It has costs that you don't pay directly, but it is most assuredly not free.
I hated Calculus. I even failed it once in college (although that was more of a lack of turning in any homework and not going to many lectures). Despite my seething hatred of it, I still understand why you might want to take it. You may not need to derive or integrate anything in IT, but you will still benefit if you know generally what it is used for and essentially how to go about doing it.
I never thought I'd have a need for statistics, and then I ended up working for someone doing some coding where I needed to run some statistical analysis on the data I pulled. There was really no need to hire two people for the job. I had sufficient skills for the task and I got the job.
I do agree, though, that there are limits as to what you need to learn off the beaten path. If you find yourself going off on tangents in pure mathematics, it will become increasingly useless to the realities of an IT career. On the other hand, if you find yourself interested in it, computers are mathematical calculation engines: you won't go wrong if you actually like some advanced mathematical subject and learn what you can with it. Your diversion could dovetail into something new and interesting.
Oh yeah. And there are these things called "females" in the other classes. Just consider the general education requirement as the college's best efforts to help get you laid.
As a sysadmin with background as a developer I find it inconceivable that anyone could become a good programmer without working knowledge of Linear Algebra, Discrete Mathematics (especially graph theory), Boolean Algebra, and Statistics. Added bonus would be a familiarity with Differential Equations, Combinatorics, and Number Theory. Calculus kind of goes without saying (I can't imagine a C.S. degree program that wouldn't require it) but honestly Mathematics is so ingrained into everything that computers do that it's foolish to disregard it.
My C.S. undergrad program required so many math courses that I actually took a couple more as electives and got my math minor on my diploma too. I feel like I might have gotten something out of Real and Complex Analysis too, if I'd been able to schedule them, but alas.
Tradition universities are massively inefficient, and - in many cases - are not needed especially in the internet age.
Consider what it costs to have a huge, sprawling campus, huge numbers of full time staff: instructors, librarians, grounds keeper, janitors, security, administrators, on an on. Consider the insurance, the utilities,
And practically none of it is really needed. You could learn US history, or Finance 101, just as well on-online - and without any of the expenses I mentioned above.
Still, $100 for a graduate degree seems awfully low. But maybe $2000?
I work for the federal government, and I have for years.
If you think there is no such thing as influence, then you are seriously naive.
The idea has been around for decades, at least. When did CLEP start?
The funny thing is: upper division credits tend to be extremely expensive, often more than traditional universities.
This makes no sense at all, and is a complete rip-off. All this is about is bring the cost down to something reasonable. What is wrong with that?
You make a very good point. I think health-care would also take some hands-on.
But what about business, history, sociology, and many other fields?
Or, maybe it would make sense to take some courses hands-on, and other courses on-line?
Have you been following the news lately?
It seems that a significant portion of people who actually vote see no value in any education...
It is probably meant as a joke but it is still a good point. Educated people wield power disproportionately in other ways though. Wouldn't you prefer, for example, that engineers for the defense industry have a solid understanding of contemporary history, regardless of whether or not they are sufficiently interested or motivated to study it on their own time?
What is the quote from Jurrassic Park about being too concerned with whether or not you could to stop and think about whether or not you should?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Thrun Do some research before you start tossing insults around. I'd rather take a course from Thrun and the other highly-regarded professors who hold top positions at MIT and Stanford than listen to some no-name middle management chump who has his head crammed up his ass.
Do you really think that $100 buys you the same access to that MIT professor that $40,000 a year does?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Yes, you would be wrong in thinking that.
In general, although universities need to adhere to accreditation guidelines, quite often these are not checked frequently or at more than a superficial level. As such, the quality of actual education can vary greatly from school to school. And, there would seem to be minimal cost levels required to support particular curricula and/or evaluation in the same. Not many Master's level curricula can be supported (together with a rigorous student evaluation) for $100.
So the OP was quite right in choosing Harvard (vetted by many years of academic history and watched over by eyes intent on "protecting the brand") over MyCousin's$100 University.
That is all.
Hammond: I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before...
Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.
No, we should move that to high school. If that's the level that everybody is expected to have, why bother padding it out past 13 years of education?
In some countries, the typical US high school age is when people are undergoing actual formal career training paths as part of primary education, depending on the field.
Universities don't teach social skills. You do not need them to get your degree, and with angry helicopter parents making a stink even in the higher education levels now, schools aren't willing to step in on that personal field.
You might argue that those without social skills would more often self-select to train at home given the opportunity and thus the concentration of socially-unskilled people might be measurable there, but going off to university won't fix that. It's an indicator of a cultural failing, not an educational failing.
It seems that the only value of general education courses is in making you fit in with other people who think the same. I'm yet to find anything to show otherwise. I'm serious. I'm not saying that nothing else but science should be of any interest. Quite to the contrary, I find it pleasurable to explore areas of theatre and literature that interest me. I'm not going to pretend it's of any use other than giving me the pleasure of learning it. It may perhaps improve my writing a bit, but that's not very important.
We live in a complicated age of information. Every person si constantly exposed to manipulation eforts from politicians, advertisers, entertainment producers, various churches etc.
I thing that solid general education background is more then needed if you want to resist this manipulation, if you want to make your own unbiased opinions and generaly if you want to live as full-fledged citizen and not just consumer subjected to the will of others.
Yeah, but I find humanities to be the least applicable when you deal with manipulation. You need solid fundamentals of sciences, though.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
That hasn't been true for my oldest, but then again he goes to a conservative school where they value such things as charity work. Thanks to him doing charity work with one of the churches affiliated with the campus he's been pretty much given keys to the kingdom, he's now head of his frat and is pretty much getting a free ride and we are not rich or influential by ANY means.
But while that may be true of the Ivy League its not true of all the schools, and considering how many senators and congressmen and governors have gone to that school i'd say that those connections really DO help.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Well, if you chose not to participate in university social life, then what is your complaint about "the social side" of your US university experience being a "disaster"?
Of course, we can automate education this way. Many students don't give a damn about one-on-one human instruction and prefer reading and watching at their own pace.
However, if you do care about personal instruction (and there do seem to be a lot of students that do), it's going to cost you.
Free software is generally developed to fulfill some need of the original developer, and they then decide to share it for free because it costs negligible time/effort/money to do so. The time/effort/money required to share a graduate-level education and verify that the student has actually learned a sufficient amount to warrant a degree is not negligible. The economics are very different.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Worked quite well for Stanley the Tool, though.
That's a nice theory and it applied 100 years ago. Today, 40% of the US population has completed degrees. Do you really think those 40% are capable of figuring out calculus, mechanics, or history by themselves? Do you really think they will be in jobs where that ability is even valued?
The people that are easy to educate and don't need hand-holding are the core 1-2% that have always gone to university. The more you expand enrollment beyond that, the more help and the more money each new student needs.
Because the university social life was regrettably bad. That's why I didn't participate in it. In a Big 10 school, too.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Well, it's obvious you're incapable of articulating any aspect of it that was actually worse. We'll take your comment for what it's worth--nothing.
That already is practiced widely. But there's a limit to how much teaching load you can impose on students. Furthermore, you can't use higher grade students as slave labor, you need to pay them too.